Quotables

If you worked in an IB school, please send us your thoughts and we may print them here.

Quote from PYP Coordinator in Japan:

“I was forced to act as the PYP coordinator for 1 year. Being the head of the elementary school I had to sit and watch the school that I built get destroyed. It (IB) is a cult, and it is brainwashing schools around the world. It is also very dangerous in the way that it is shaping education around the world.”

“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e., an “extraterrestrial” invasion], whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”

Quote from Brock Adams, Director UN Health Organization:

“To achieve world government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas.”

Quote from the National Education Association Journal, 1946:

“In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher has many parts to play… He can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation… At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession.”

Ingrid Chen, 18, IB student:

“I was taught that communism was bad until I took history in the international baccalaureate program at Richmond High,” she said.

From former General Director of International Baccalaureate Organization George Walker:

On the purpose of global education: “…”skill of persuading [other] people to compromise or change their minds” as well, a citizen with “both the ability and the attitude that wants to shift another person’s position as well as their own.”

“How do we reconcile a spirit of inquiry with a patriarchal culture that values received wisdom and rote learning? How can a secular curriculum be adopted in a country where religious faith, rather than empirical observation, defines the limits of truth? Is it possible to be a free-thinking individual, perhaps perceived as amoral, in a culture where the rules and rituals are unconditionally accepted and rigorously adhered to?”

On the three parts to the IB curriculum: “compulsory, timetabled part of the learning in which everyone participates; extra- or co-curriculum which is voluntary but enriches the compulsory curriculum; it is what we often remember most from our school experience; hidden curriculum, the informal but influential rules, beliefs and attitudes that determine the transmission of norms and values.”

“My third point was a rather obvious one and simply suggested that what I am calling global awareness is likely to be encouraged by a study of global issues that cross national frontiers, which might include issues of disease, the environment, poverty, conflict resolution, and so on. Such issues feature strongly in the IB Primary Years and Middle Years programmes, but they are often hard to find in the Diploma Programme”

“For me, citizenship implies action.”

From Dr. Jean Chagnon, DDS, husband of Bedford School Board member Cindy Chagnon, to a fellow IB proponent at the meeting where IB materials were being questioned:

“I’m expecting to see the Westboro Baptist Church arrive any minute now”.
From the textbook “Professional Learning Communities” (Learning by Doing: DuFour, Dufour, Eaker, and Many) being used to train teachers:

“The process to establish a guaranteed and viable curriculum should be specifically designed to eliminate content from the curriculum”.

“The IB has all the infrastructure to teach not just government, but international government; not just law, but international law. I find that very exciting.”

“The question is whether we can formulate public international policy which really has teeth…”

“The UN attempted this, but the thing of real interest is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This presupposes that there is a common morality that is superior to the different concepts of morality that different cultures have.”

From an IB Teacher:

“A large part of the PYP program involves the action cycle, teaching the students to become activists, which is one issue I always had with the IB program. To me there is something developmentally wrong with teaching first and third graders how to take action on important issues when they really know nothing about life.”

From an IB Document:

“Global thinking citizens will have a much better chance in their future in a world where international boundaries have begun to be erased”.